Gel Ball News: Hasbro “Owns” the Market Now? Part 2

At the end of last year, I wrote an article going partway through the legal battle surrounding gel ball blasters. Life then happened, and I didn’t get around to writing Part 2. Turns out that’s a good thing, because a lot has happened in the meantime. In any case, it would appear that Hasbro has ultimate say in the market. After all, most of the companies with gel ball blasters still being put on shelves have a licensing agreement with Hasbro – not to mention that in many stores, Nerf Pro Gelfire is in the toy aisle, while others are stuck in sporting goods.

Let’s get back into the legal drama, shall we?

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Tiktok Ban? Will Nerf Content End?

Apparently, there’s a new push to ban Tiktok over potential national security issues (owned by Bytedance, in China, etc.). Regardless of whether you think it’s needed, it does put an interesting spin on company advertising as well as regular content creation. We’ve seen Xshot have extreme success on social media at low cost, and Nerf even had a contest for “Chief Tiktok Officer” in 2021. Assuming Tiktok isn’t sold off to someone else, it’s quite possible that it will be banned.

The relevant legislation came out of committee with a unanimous vote, and now goes for votes in Congress. The President has indicated he would sign legislation, as well. So it will be interesting to see how both regular creators and corporations respond after investing time and money into using the new social media platform.

Dart Zone Talks About the Nexus Pro X and Aeon Pro X

There’s obviously some bias here (given the source), but the newest Blaster Chat from Dart Zone goes into detail about the upcoming refresh of the Adventure Force standards, as well as other details.

Let’s sum up a few details!

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Nerf Elite Jr. Lionfury Review

The Nerf Elite Jr. line certainly isn’t meant to be a powerhouse – I’m not sure how to rate it in that regard in terms of range, as you’ll see below. But don’t let a low range score fool you; for the target age range, the Lionfury is a great choice for entering the world of dart blasting. Not to mention I appreciate the return to cool alternative blaster designs – who knew I wanted a spiritual successor to Max Force 2112?

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Nerf Rival Challenger Review

Here’s a fun fact: we haven’t had a new Nerf Rival flywheel blaster in over four years, since BEFORE the Covid pandemic. The last one was the Charger, which came in at $35, featured an internal magazine, and focused on being a compact primary blaster. This year, with the continued Accustrike refresh of the product line, we have the Charger – a blaster for the same price, but with much more capability. It’s essentially a Rival Stryfe, and that’s a great thing.

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Tidal Storm Aqua Thunder Review

There aren’t too many new things in the world of soakers this year. For the most part, we have variations of products from last year, just in a different or larger format. Prime Time Toys (makers of Dart Zone), though, seems to have settled for a throwback of sorts. The Tidal Storm Aqua Thunder is a battery-operated water blaster that is fed by “magazines”, not unlike the Nerf Super Soakers of a decade ago (or models far older than that). The capacity is limited (both by volume and by a current lack of replacement magazines), as is the range. But the ergonomics are great, and there are a couple other surprises in store for hobbyists, should they want to tear it apart.

In any case, when it comes to arming the children, the Aqua Thunder does the job.

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Hasbro 2024 Product Lookbook – New Nerf Incoming!

We don’t have Toy Fair in New York this year, but companies are still announcing new products right now. In the case of Hasbro, that apparently includes late-night emails with PDFs full of product entries!

Nevertheless, let’s take a peek at some of the products announced – some we already know are coming, and a few that are new!

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